


You Only Live Twice

by anilad



Category: James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 05:57:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anilad/pseuds/anilad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After almost a year in the position, Eve Moneypenny was finding the switch from fieldwork to a desk job to be much less dissimilar than she had previously assumed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Only Live Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this during NANO when I was stuck on an original fic about werewolves. No betaing here, so let me know if you see anything wonky.

After almost a year as M’s secretary, Eve Moneypenny was finding the switch from field agent to office worker to be much less dissimilar than she had previously assumed.  
  
Long, exhausting hours? Check.  
  
Stressful deadlines with sometimes life or death consequences? Check.  
  
Misogynistic men giving her “poor dear” looks that brought out the urge to revive some of the baser methods of dismemberment? Check.   
  
And tonight, or rather this morning as it was just past two in the AM, she was experiencing all three. M had been sequestered for hours with some members of Parliament and other varied government officials, leaving her to wait them out. It had been quiet in the office for an hour or so, an improvement from the shouting match she had heard muffled through the thick wooden door, before the office opened up and the men filed out.  
  
A few of them walked past her desk without so much as a glance at her, but one especially supercilious man gave her one of those looks that she so disliked.   
  
“Oh my, we have kept you late haven’t we, dear?” he said. “Do you need a ride home, young lady?”  
  
‘Young lady’, she thought viciously, but she covered her irritation with a saccharine smile.   
  
“That’s kind of you sir, but I think I’ll be able to navigate my way home,” she told him. If only he knew. Most muggers would be very unlucky indeed if they were to attempt to accost her, she may have been working in a position her mother could tell her friends over tea about but that didn’t mean that she had left all her old skills behind.   
  
M was the last out of the office. He gave her a tired smile before making goodbyes to the last of the meeting-goers. He was holding a binder and he pulled a sheaf of paper out of it to hand it to her over the desk   
  
“Ms. Moneypenny, I’ll need to have this sent over, first thing tomorrow at the very lastest,” he told her. His kind eyes were apologetic but unwavering. She suppressed a sigh.   
  
“I’ll see to it before I head home, sir.”  
  
“Thank you.” He nodded a goodbye to her before picking up his things and leaving.   
  
After his departure, she didn’t bother stopping an empathic exhale.  
  
Going on bloody three o’clock in the morning and the man wanted her send out messages. Had it really been worth it to give up on the excitement of field work to be someone’s scurrying mouse, even when that someone was one of the more powerful men in England, she mused.  
  
Setting things up for the courier service at this late hour was not as easy as it would been yesterday afternoon or even at eight o’clock in the morning but Eve got it done, as efficiently as ever. The clipped voice over the phone told her someone would be at the East Entrance to collect it promptly at four.   
  
Four, she looked at the clock, it still wasn’t yet three, but she knew if she pushed the voice over the phone now, the next time she needed something important done there would be Problems. The wonders of the civilized world and bureaucracy. So she politely told him four would be fine, thanks very much.   
  
Now how to kill an hour, she wondered when she got off the phone. In the field, free time on a mission usually meant a nap or a snack (... or a drink or a shag). At this time of night, she knew that attempting anything short of three hours of sleep would be unhelpful and the other choices weren’t really viable on work premises so she decided to head down to the staff canteen down by the Q Division.  
  
There was a closer one, on the level below her office, but she knew exactly how much time it took get there and back and it was much less than the hour she was looking to waste. Also she knew that the Q Division’s canteen was better stocked overnight; that level was filled with people who preferred to burn the midnight oil rather than be in for the 9-5.   
  
Not that she saw much of the 9-5 herself, Eve thought wryly. In this job or the last one.   
  
She wondered if the iced biscuits that she coveted were still set out on the table with the rest of the sweets. Even if they were a little stale, they still didn’t taste bad dunked in tea.   
  
As she walked through the hall, she noted that the building was looking rather desolate tonight. Usually there would be one or two night owls creating a ruckus. Although, normally the latest she walked through this area was nine o’clock so perhaps her ideas about the kind of chaos that went on down here was overblown.   
  
Wait, no. There was still one light on down the dark hall. It was coming from one of the Q Division labs. In fact, unless she was mistaken and she rarely was (baring one major lapse that she no longer considered so egregious considering the man was in fact alive), the light emanated from Q’s combination office/lab. While the new Q specialized in computer security rather than the weapons development his predecessor had prefered, he still maintained the lab for small projects.   
  
The new Quartermaster amused Eve. He was young for his post, a good thirty years junior to the previous Q, with a shock of dark curling hair. The former Q had been a balding, grey grandfatherly figure. The only thing that the two of them shared in Eve’s opinion, beyond a title, was their singular sense of self-importance.   
  
Or at least that’s what she had thought when she had first made the acquaintance of the newly installed Quartermaster. She hadn’t totally changed her opinion of his as an overly smug, occasionally short-sighted man, but at the same time she now felt something approaching affection for him.   
  
After the security breach perpetuated Silva on his “secure systems”, Q had suffered a bit of a loss of faith. M had decided to table the frantic talk from others about sacking him immediately, and, in one of his first official decisions as resident M, he told Q that he was on probation till further notice.   
  
The shell-shocked look on his face as Q exited M’s office had brought an unexpected feeling of empathy up within Eve. She’d stopped him before he’d left her enclosed area of the office. Without thinking too much about her motivations, she said, “Go out to pub for a drink with me tonight?”  
  
He hadn’t seemed to understand her question for a moment. The thought process had slowed in his mind and it took him a longer to link what he had heard with a response than it should have. When his mind made the connection, something in his face unclenched and he no longer looked at though the next strong wind would blow him over.   
  
“If you want,” he replied. “I’m not usually done till at least half seven though.” She shrugged.  
  
“You think I am?” She had grinned then and his answering grin was better than she might have expected. It had been enough to reassure her that he wouldn’t be eaten up after he passed through the doors and she’d waved him out.   
  
After that, the two of them had been friendly. Perhaps she had been a little friendlier with him than was politic considering his status as persona non grata, but that had changed recently so now she didn’t even had to worry about that, not that she really had even when it had mattered. She clearly remembered how it had been in the office after she had been suspended for the shot that downed 007. Her co-workers had suddenly begun avoiding her as though she was carrying the Black Plague. It had been illuminating.   
  
The route from her office to the canteen took her directly past Q’s office, and as she got closer to it, she heard an odd noise. It piqued her interest and she decided to pop her head in. If Q was still hanging about the office, she might as well say hello.   
  
She wasn’t trying to be especially quiet, until she heard a voice that was definitely not Q’s.   
  
The low undertone was immediately familiar even if she didn’t recognize it until she heard a voice that definitely belonged to Q saying the other’s name.  
  
“Bond,” Q’s voice rasped. Eve felt her eyebrows raise. She had never heard Q voice sound quite like that. And Bond? Eve could only think of one off the top of her head.   
  
Using the stealth she had cultivated as a field agent, Eve carefully made her toward Q’s office. If what she thought was, well no use supposing when she could see for herself in a moment, she told herself.  
  
Her blood was up and after living so long with so few adrenaline spikes, it made her hyper aware of the sounds coming from behind the ajar door. When she finally got close close enough to look through, she only stopped herself from exclaiming something obscene from years of ingrained training.  
  
Q was in his office and he wasn’t alone. James Bond, Bloody 007 himself, was fucking Q over Q’s own desk. Eve held her breath, barely daring to breath as she watched, unable to tear her gaze away from the scene.  
  
Bond’s expression as he moved behind Q was inscrutable. His eyes, normally entirely emotionless, were filled with the blaze of passion, while his mouth was thin and unsmiling. Eve watched as he ran his hand along Q’s bare back.   
  
There was something about Bond’s movements that struck her as incredibly intimate, moreso even than one would expect from a man with his lover. There was an awful tenderness in it that was almost painful to watch.  
  
It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d played the voyeur, more than one mission had involved using the distractions made available to her in order to get information and sex was one of the best, but there was something about Bond’s movements that struck her as incredibly intimate. She felt like an intruder watching him and Q together, in a way she never had when she was on a mission .   
  
It was different when she personally knew both of the people involved in the act, she supposed. If pushed, she might even say that Q was a friend at this point.   
  
Eve’s feeling on 007 were more clear. It was him more than any of the 00’s that had convinced her to leave fieldwork definitely and not because she’d shot him. It was the fact that while she had been benched and stuck at the home office she had seen the attitude people took toward the higher level agents. She didn’t just want to be another tool in MI6’s toolbox. Even if Bond a capable and  very dangerous man, he was really only thought of a someone who was best put to use as an instrument of death. The M’s of the world fulfilled an important role, they guided the tools.   
  
And then there was the fact that when Bond when he wasn’t ‘on’, when he wasn’t flirting or playing a role, his face took on an empty look.   
  
He didn’t look like that now.   
  
Eve moved away from the door slowly. Neither of the men noticed her.   
  
She decided not to go to the canteen after all. The iced biscuits no longer held the same appeal. Her walk back to her office was a thoughtful one.  

**Author's Note:**

> There is a potential prequel to this from Q's POV. We'll see what happens. :)


End file.
